A few things I thought of:
How are we planning to activate the implant, if we use a magnet implant would we have to hold the magnet there for the entire display duration, and would we be able to have multiple sensors for multiple functions, like date and time separately?
How much progress has been made towards programming the implant?
Do we know the approximate amount of power generated and used? Can we figure out how often the implant can be used?
Do we know what kind of chips we would use for this question mark would we name custom silicone?
No additional programming has been done by me. We don’t have any real hardware at the moment to program. If we have sufficient power then the idea would be that however it is triggered it would then display the time and stop.
You would want to trigger it, it displays and then sleeps.
I’ve been focusing on acquiring the betavoltaics, so I haven’t done much part sourcing. If we can’t acquire betavoltaics for the foreseeable future without significant investment, we may need to seek out an alternative power source. I really don’t think continuously topping it off from your phone is viable, because at that point why not just use the phone.
If anyone has any ideas I’m all ears. We can always try and source a low power/profile RTC module and work up from there, but without some form of battery, generator, or energy harvesting, we don’t really have a path forward.
If anyone is independently wealthy and wants to see this through though, you could easily pay for an R&D license from the NRC and order some custom betavoltaics from Widetronix. I will certainly help
Less than 1mm z-height is necessary and less than 0.7mm would be ideal. We really only need one input if we decide to use a panel, but multiple would inputs would be useful if we elected to use multiple photodiodes as the source.
automatic mechanical watches offer unlimited viewing time, but typically runs out of stored energy if unworn for a day or two
Totally unrealistic but I can’t help but imagine some kind of steampunk electro-mechanical watch implant where the mechanical side is the energy harvesting mechanism that winds up a spring and when you trigger the time it releases a little bit of energy for lighting up the LEDs and charging a capacitor for the RTC to run on. Or something along those lines. Unfortunately I have had a cheap automatic watch in the past and the energy harvesting mechanism was not good enough to keep it running through a week of wearing it and being active. That was a cheap watch of course.
Downsides of the idea being size, weight, and wear from it being a mechanical device that cannot be serviced easily. Whole lot of bad with the idea but still fun to think about.
We can get so much energy from just tapping your phone to the implant for 3 seconds that in all honestly an energy harvesting solution like photodiodes is just a trickle charge supplement to get you through the day. Personally not a fan of mechanical or piezoelectric solutions though because as you stated mechanical parts wear.
If we had literally any supplemental energy though we could still go through with the plan of having the NTAG 5 handle the charging and communication with the RTC using its transparent I2C master channel to configure the RTC from a phone using raw ISO 15693 commands in case of drift or power loss.
How long would it last? If I had something like this I wouldn’t mind tapping my phone to it 1 or 2 times a day to get it to stay on. You could also use readers that you have around work or at a store right? I can already imaging using a payment terminal to “charge up” my watch implant. That’s how it would work right? I don’t see it as too inconvenient. Excuse my ignorance lol I haven’t been paying to much attention to this thread.
eInk! That could be possible to have always up to date but visibility would be a bit shit without a bright light. Thoughts? Sort of like a dynamic tattoo
Correct me if I’m wrong, but while e ink screens are supposedly fixed in place and require little to no power to maintain a display… I was under the impression they require MORE power to flip the pixels…
meaning a constantly updating e ink display might suck down more power than an led
That depends on the version, i believe. I did not really understand everything on this E Ink - Wikipedia article, but from what i read on other sites, wich i dont exactly remember, the different versions use different amounts of power.
Has anyone done the maths on power production and usage?
I will if I can get an idea of the parts you’re thinking of
Just want to write down my thoughts so I don’t forget ignore all this:
Could we do 14 segment displays for more possibilities? Shouldn’t use more power except when using the extra segments, but might need a bigger chip to run it. On the same train, 2 digits?
Could it be user programmable? ie open source and flashable, maybe with fedismo?? Don’t know what the platform supports.
MY SISTER’S IDEA
would it be possible to develop the implants on the assumption that the spec sheets of the beatvolteics are right, and then integrate them without technically using them during development? What are we allowed to do without a licence? Would each owner need a lisence? How far can we stretch it?
Have you approached a university or other research place about using their lisence? I’d be happy to see if I can find some people in my course who could make this a reality
Ok I think I’m actually going to do this as a project for a bit, the licence for Victoria, AU look like they’re only AUD$1300 (USD$900). @Satur9 have you had any actual communication with either betavoltaic producer? Would they really be only $16 each?
Widetronix and Citylabs were the only ones I found that offer surface mount options. That’s just the roughest of estimates from Chris though. Larger order quantifies will obviously create lower per-unit costs.
If you can get things lined up, I’ll contribute funds, and I know leumas95 will as well